No.2 - Bitter and beautiful: all winter

Bitter and beautiful: all winter

those words haunted me.

Day after day
Crow perched on them

and turned her sad
wise eyes to mine.

One winter I plan to grow
small

so Crow will make me
her baby.

She will carry me from
bitter to beautiful

and back again
over and over

and I will sleep
and sleep

through it all.

----Zann Carter 04.02.09

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Notes
As usual, I am making my own set of rules. I will write a poem every day and I will post a poem that I have written every day. It just may not be the poem I wrote that day.

I actually started on March 31. Just wanted to see if I could indeed write a poem that was relatively acceptable, blog-worthy, in a brief period of time. My intention is to spend a half-hour or so on this each morning. I might let it steep a bit during the rest of the day, make some changes here and there. I might play around with ideas for the next day’s poem.

So yesterday, April 1, I posted the poem I wrote March 31. I also wrote another poem in the evening. I wrote another poem yesterday morning. And last night. I may be so inspired and filled with poetry focus that I write all 30 poems for the month very quickly...so I am not going to be so strict with myself as to just when I write the poem that I post each day on the blog.

The poems will, however, all be new (though I may use old notes as starters), written quickly, without a lot of agonizing editing.

I also want to use this challenge to write shorter poems than I usually write, to experiment, allow myself a to take a different poetic path than my usual path, to play with chance and found poems. Fun - this girl just wants to have wordy fun and is having it (despite the somewhat bleak nature of the first two poems I've posted.)


As For Fiber-related Work....
I'm deeply engaged with completing my pieces for the International Freeform Fiberarts Guild 2009 Challenge/Exhibit. We're not supposed to write about our submissions in detail, so I can say no more than that right now.

You can see the challenges for the past three years here. I was able to participate in 2007, but missed last year and getting in the book that was done. I believe there will be a book created again this year. All profits from the sale of the book benefit Women for Women International.

I'm tremendously excited about working on this as I almost thought I was going to have to pass on the challenge again this year. Creative energy seems to be pretty thick and intense for me right now. I'm also excited because the piece that was created from our 2007 scrumbles has been displayed numerous times since and this month is going to be displayed and (hopefully) sold at Lion Brand Yarn Studio in NYC, the money again going to Women for Women.

That's it - the eghan or elementsghan. Here you can see the individual freeform artists' scrumbles for earth, water, air and fire. Imagine the work to assemble them into this splendid piece! We have the awesome Myra Wood to thank for that. I remember Myra being so patient and responsive to my questions back then. I love Myra's book on crocheting freeform lace:


and am eagerly awaiting her upcoming book on freeform knitted lace.

Namaste,
'Zann